44th or 45th? US presidential poll is a numbers game

The key question is whether the 45th president will be sworn in on January 20, 2013, or whether America will have to wait for another four years.

By the time this newspaper reaches you, you would have a fair idea of whether the US will continue to have a 44th president or is moving on to a 45th one. If John F Kerry had defeated Bush in the 2004 presidential elections, the 21st century JFK would have been the 44th president of the US.

However, Bush continued as the 43rd US president until Barack Obama took over as the 44th one on January 20, 2009. The key question is whether the 45th president will be sworn in on January 20, 2013, or whether America will have to wait for another four years. Numerologists would have a field day answering that question.

The number 45 adds up to 9, which many consider lucky in India. However, 44 adds up to 8, which is considered lucky in China. Since Romney has been breathing fire and fury during the long-drawn-out US presidential campaign on the need to take firm action on what he termed as Beijing's unfair trade practices, China could prefer to continue to deal with Obama.

However, any such analysis would now be dated. What the Americans call perfect twenty-20 hindsight is always more accurate than vague pre-polling speculation on whether the US presidential letterhead from January 20, 2013, will have 12 characters, as in Barack H Obama, or just 10, as in Mitt Romney.

If the 44th president extends his tenure in the White House and goes on to serve a second and final term, he will be the first incumbent with a surname ending in the vowel 'a' to do so.

If Obama is pre-empted by Romney, we could be returning to the more conventional era when the US presidential surname ended in a consonant. However, by the time this newspaper reaches you, the only relevant analysis will be the post-facto one spouted by the pundits of who won, who lost and why.